PDF figures

[Karl Berry]

    Does your answer mean you can merge a .pdf image into a .pdf file, if
    you have Distiller? Not having Distiller, its capabilities are
    beginning to sound almost magical ;-)

It is not especially magical.  In a nutshell, it converts PostScript to
PDF.  Since both formats were invented by Adobe, as you might imagine,
they have a lot in common already.

Ghostscript, which is free software and available on all major
platforms, has the same capability, usually invoked through the script
ps2pdf.  Naturally, ps2pdf and Distiller have different bugs, features,
pros, cons, etc.  See www.ghostscript.com.

One common way to use pdf files as images is to use pdflatex to create
pdf files directly.  Then the standard \includegraphics, etc., commands
will understand .pdf, and the whole ps->pdf conversion step is omitted.

pdflatex can also directly read .jpg, .png, and all the other usual
formats -- the only common image format it cannot deal with is,
ironically enough, .eps.  (Unfortunately, there are basic technical
issues involved which make it impossible.)

I don't know if Y&Y TeX has pdf(la)tex, so I don't know if this helps,
just thought I'd mention it.

karl